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Helvétius and the Problems of Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

D. W. Smith
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Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 275 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 De l'esprit, Paris, 1758, 4to, (henceforth E.), pp. i–iiGoogle Scholar. The translations, which are mine, are not slavishly literal.

2 De l'homme, London, 1773, 2 vols. (639; 760 pp.)Google Scholar, (henceforth H.), i. 91.

3 H., i. 333Google Scholar. Henceforth, references for allusions to and quotations from Helvétius's two works will be given in one note for each paragraph.

4 E., p. 322Google Scholar; H., ii. 405.Google Scholar

5 Shackleton, R., ‘The “greatest happiness of the greatest number”: the history of Bentham's phrase’, Studies on Voltaire, xc (1972), 1466Google Scholar. See H., i. 73.Google Scholar

6 E., pp. 220–1Google Scholar; cf. H., i. 524Google Scholar; ii. 406.

7 E., p. 163Google Scholar; p. 46; H., i. 137Google Scholar. n.31; ii. 499; E., p. ivGoogle Scholar; H., i., p. iii.Google Scholar

8 Hayer, Père J. N. H., La Religion vengée, 12 vols., Paris, 1757–1760, vi. 304Google Scholar. See also de M. d'Autrey, H. J. B. F., Idées sur la loi naturelle, Amsterdam, 1759, p. 15.Google Scholar

9 See Rosenberg, A., Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Providence: an Interpretive Essay, Sherbrooke, 1987, ch. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

10 E., p. 56Google Scholar; p. 313; H., ii. 72Google Scholar; ii. 72 n.b.

11 de Beaumont, C., Mandement de Monseigneur l'archevêque de Paris, portant condamnation d'un livre qui a pour titre, De l'esprit, Paris, 1758, p. 15Google Scholar. Cf. Hayer, , vii. 209–10Google Scholar; Lettres à M.*** traduite de l'anglois, Amsterdam, 1759, p. 42Google Scholar; Journal de Trévoux, 11 1758, pp. 2845–6.Google Scholar

12 E., p. 105Google Scholar (cf. H., i. 206–7Google Scholar; i. 605); H., ii. 286 n.17Google Scholar; ii. 282 n. 9.

13 Voltaire, , Oeuvres complètes, ed. Moland, L., 52 vols., Paris, 1877–1885, xxvii. 399–400.Google Scholar

14 H., i. 482–3Google Scholar (cf. H., ii. 72 n.b)Google Scholar; E., p. 80Google Scholar; E., p. 79Google Scholar n. c; H., ii. 515Google Scholar (cf. H., ii. 719).Google Scholar

15 This example is taken from Diderot, 's untitled work published as ‘Diderot et l'abbé Barthelémy’, Revue mondiale, cxxxv (1960), 261Google Scholar; cf. E., p. 79Google Scholar n.c. John Stuart Mill uses this example of a lie ‘expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose’. Though Mill acknowledges that all lies undermine both the credibility and the character of the teller, as well as impairing general trust in men's assertions, he recognizes that ‘after weighing conflicting utilities against one another’, we can justify some lies. (‘Utilitarianism’, in Essays on Ethics, Religions and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, x. 223).Google Scholar

16 H., ii. 459Google Scholar (cf. E., p. vGoogle Scholar; H., ii. 462Google Scholar, n. a; ii. 472; ii. 499); E., p. vGoogle Scholar (cf. E., p. 309 n. b)Google Scholar; H., ii. 466.Google Scholar

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19 For further discussion of this subject, see Crocker, L. G., ‘The Problem of Truth and Falsehood in the Age of Enlightenment’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xiv (1953), 573–603Google Scholar; and my ‘The “Useful Lie” in Helvétius and Diderot’, Diderot Studies, xiv (1971), 185–95.Google Scholar

20 Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar

21 H., i 91–2Google Scholar (cf. ii. 399–400; ii. 431–2 n.a).

22 H., i 559Google Scholar; E., p. viGoogle Scholar; H., ii. 500Google Scholar; ii. 506 n.b; E., p. 105Google Scholar; H., ii. 607 n.26Google Scholar; ii. 62 n.a.

23 E., p. 214Google Scholar; p. 224, 226 n.c; H., ii. 650Google Scholar; i. 572.

24 H., ii. 286 n.17Google Scholar; ii. 205 n.19; E., p. 147Google Scholar; H., i 559Google Scholar; i. 395 n.24; i. 597 n.7; ii. 652.

25 H., ii. 280 n.7Google Scholar; ii. 157 n.a; i. 541; i. 331; E., p. 25 n.eGoogle Scholar; H., i. 78.Google Scholar

26 H., ii. 406–7Google Scholar, ii. 399–400.

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29 H., i. 82Google Scholar (cf. H., i. 287–8Google Scholar; i. 367); ii. 506; E., p. 523Google Scholar n.a (cf. H., i. 366–7)Google Scholar; H., ii. 506Google Scholar; E., p. 6 n.dGoogle Scholar; p. 561; H., ii. 228Google Scholar; H., i. 524.Google Scholar

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33 H., i. 223Google Scholar; ii. 625–9. This belief in public education separates the French and English Lockeans. Priestley and Godwin, like Mill, shared Helvétius's confidence in the power of education to mould men's minds, and, for that very reason, as dissenters, feared public education as an instrument of state despotism. See Passmore, J. A., ‘The Malleability of Man in Eighteenth-century Thought’, in Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Wasserman, E. R., Baltimore, 1965, p. 44–5.Google Scholar

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35 E., p. 632.Google Scholar

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38 Rousseau, , Du contrat social, part II. ch. 7.Google Scholar

39 Le Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. 10 Oeuvres complètes, xiv. 243.Google Scholar

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